Gangland UK: The Inside Story of Britain's Most Evil Gangsters (6 page)

However, the lawless Richardsons preferred the method of investing in ‘long firms’. A company would be set up by an acquaintance of the brothers. Trading would start, building up a good credit rating, and then the company would place a large order on credit and sell the goods. Quite naturally, the Richardsons would pocket the money and the company would disappear into thin air, often leaving the unwitting supplier totally ignorant that he had just made a large donation to the Richardson gang, who, in turn, contributed a percentage of the proceeds to the police fund to keep the cops off their backs. Nice work if you can get it.

Perhaps the greatest influence on Kenny’s life around this time was Billy Haywood, a brutal mobster who had secured a place in gangland folklore by fighting a pitched battle with the Richardsons over who should control local protection rackets. Known as ‘The Battle of Mr Smith’s Club’, one of Haywood’s men, called Dickie Hart, was shot dead during the mélèe; Haywood won, however, effectively taking down the Richardsons’ empire at a stroke.

It was Haywood who impressed upon Noye that the more astute criminals were the middle-men – the handlers of stolen property and money – rather than those who actually got their hands dirty. This confirmed what Noye had more or less figured out for himself while in Borstal, so he lapped up Haywood’s counselling like a cat gorging itself on cream.

And there was something else that Noye had figured out on his own, something that was also endorsed by Billy Haywood. Always a ‘watcher of people’, Kenny had noticed that the small-time crooks spent most of their illicit gains gambling on the dogs, the horses, in pubs and clubs, pissing their money up against a wall, and buying what we might call today ‘bling-bling’ trinkets – heavy gold bracelets, neck chains, rings and the like. The brighter lads invested, and many invested significantly in property, mini-cab firms, launderettes, sometimes even the stock market.

The 1960s was a crucial time in Noye’s life. Even before he had been sent to Borstal, he’d been mapping out a criminal career. His chance meeting with Brenda Tremain in her local pub, The Harrow, and a chance meeting with Micky Lawson, who introduced him to the south-east London pubs, all contributed to Noye’s education. His mentor – the utterly fearless, yet criminally astute Billy Haywood – and the constant shoulder-rubbing with scores of London’s real tough guys, all cemented together his ambitions for the future. But he had a fatal flaw, and it was to prove his Achilles heel – his short fuse.

Noye had been drinking in a Peckham pub, and his drink was knocked over. Rightly, Kenny asked for it to be replaced. The request was denied. The two men exchanged words and the comparatively diminutive Noye walked out to the sound of hisses and boos. Thinking that Noye was a coward, the customers returned sniggering to their drinks… it was a bad move.

Rather than slink away from the pub with his tail in between his legs, Noye had gone to his car to pick up an ‘equaliser’ – a double-barrelled, 12-gauge shotgun.
Moments later, he burst through the front door and aimed it at the men who had insulted him. The bar went as quiet as the grave; no one dared move. Slowly, Noye brought the weapon round, stopping momentarily at each one in turn. Then he pointed it at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. The shot blasted a hole in the plaster, showering the men with debris. Then he calmly walked out without a further word being said. The message sent a signal around the manor – cross Kenny Noye and you could end up dead.

From then on, Kenny Noye started earning serious money from fencing stolen property – car parts, shipments of whisky, cigarettes and cigars. Among the criminal fraternity, his word and his money were good. He was someone to be trusted, and he never missed a trick, but he needed a front for his growing enterprise, somewhere away from prying eyes and off the beaten track.

He found such a location in a quiet Kent village called West Kingsdown, and there he started his own haulage company, which he ran from a battered caravan behind a local garage. And the parish had another bonus, too – there was only one copper whose principal duties extended to riding around on his bike or napping in a panda car. The local force were totally oblivious to the success of Mr Noye’s growing haulage company, which soon expanded to more than a dozen lorries.

Kenny and Brenda married in August 1970. They had bought a dilapidated bungalow on 20 acres of prime land in West Kingsdown’s Hever Avenue. They set the bungalow on fire, claimed on the insurance and set about constructing a huge, mock-Tudor mansion. This was followed by the building of Hollywood Cottage – ten
bedrooms, an indoor swimming pool, jacuzzi, huge snooker room, all protected by the most comprehensive of security systems. Noye was now a millionaire.

For the next decade, Kenny Noye went from strength to strength, give or take one or two brushes with the law. During this time, though, he had set his sights on gold bullion, and a lot of it was stolen – 10 tonnes of it to be precise – in what has become known as ‘The Brinks Mat Robbery’.

The scheme had been masterminded by one Brian Robinson, and the heist occurred at around 6.40am, on Saturday, 26 November 1983, when six armed robbers broke into the Brinks Mat’s Unit 7 warehouse on a trading estate near Heathrow Airport. The men thought – as they had been told by insider guard Anthony Black, brother-in-law of Robinson – that the haul would be
£
3 million in cash. How wrong they were, for when they got inside they found themselves looking in amazement at ten tonnes of gold bullion worth the best part of
£
26 million.

Of course, it proved to be a terrible ordeal for the Brink’s-Mat staff, who feared for their lives. Petrol was poured over one man’s genitals, and he was threatened with being set ablaze or being shot if he didn’t comply by neutralising the alarms and opening the vault – which he did.

The vault turned out to be a treasure trove. For several moments, the robbers were unable to speak. They were looking at 60 boxes, which contained a total of 2,670 kilos of gold worth
£
26,369,778. Over in a corner was a stack of several hundred thousand pounds in used banknotes. In a safe was a pouch containing $250,000 in travellers’
cheques. In anther safe was yet another pouch filled with polished and rough diamonds valued at
£
113,000.

The gang had expected rich pickings, but not a haul beyond their wildest dreams. As Wensley Clarkson observes in his book, ‘Their audacious plot, ruthless in its conception and brilliant in its execution, had just landed them the biggest haul in British criminal history.’

The 1963 Great Train Robbery, which netted the villains
£
2.6 million, paled into insignificance, even considering inflation, when compared with this
Brink’s-Mat
raid. No doubt, the Great Train Robbery was a coup. It involved cunning and intricate timing – the stopping of a mail train in the dead of night precisely at a particular railway bridge in Buckinghamshire, the unloading of mail bags containing the haul, and conveying it away in a small fleet of vehicles to a place called Letherslade Farm, where it was divided up, with each crook going their separate ways. But the Brink’s-Mat gang, with balls of steel, hoovered up their entire proceeds and carried it all away in a single truck. For that, they deserve the Nobel Prize for Planning and Execution.

Scotland Yard soon discovered the family connection between Messrs Black and Robinson and, under interrogation, Black soon grassed up his accomplices. Tried at the Old Bailey, Robinson and principal accomplice Michael McAvory earned themselves 25 years’ imprisonment. Black got six years, and served three.

Enter Kenny Noye. Prior to his conviction, McAvory had entrusted part of his share to an associate called Brian Perry. Perry recruited Kenneth Noye (who had links to a legitimate gold dealer in Bristol) to dispose of the gold. Noye melted down the bullion and recast it for
sale. However, the sudden movements of large amounts of money through a Bristol bank came to the notice of the Treasury, who informed the police. Noye was placed under police surveillance and, in January 1985, ‘it all came on top’, as they say in Kenny’s world.

With all of the Brink’s-Mat robbers behind bars, police focused on Noye and they shadowed him everywhere he went. It was obvious that he was the key to the distribution of the gold and, if they were going to achieve anything, they would have to move closer to him rather than simply tail him from place to place.

Early in January 1985, eight C11 officers from the Specialist Surveillance Unit took up covert positions near Hollywood Cottage but, apart from Noye’s comings and goings, nothing much happened until 26 January.

It was a bitterly cold evening when, at 6.15pm, DC John Fordham, 43, and DC Neil Murphy, dressed in rubber wetsuits, camouflage clothing and balaclavas, climbed over a wall into Noye’s property and made their way to a copse and shrubbery in front of the large barn. Fordham was also equipped with a pair of
light-intensifying
, night-sight binoculars, a webbing scarf, gloves, a camouflaged forage cap and a green webbing harness to keep the larger of his two radios in position while crawling through the undergrowth.

The officers were now just 60 yards from the house when one of Noye’s three Rottweilers appeared out of the darkness and started snapping at the ‘intruders’. Noye heard the commotion, grabbed a leather jacket from behind a chair and headed for the front door. Outside, he walked to his Ford Granada and picked up a knife and a torch.

The Rottweiler was still barking, and Noye heard someone call out halfway down the drive, ‘Dogs!’ Neil Murphy made a beeline for the boundary fence of the property and climbed up to take stock of the situation. He tried to attract the attention of the dogs but, in doing so, attracted the attention of Noye, who flashed the torch beam in his direction.

‘Keep those dogs quiet,’ shouted Murphy.

Noye froze. A second later, a hooded figure appeared a few feet away. A scuffle ensued and Noye, fearful that he was about to be murdered by the stranger, stabbed DC Fordham eight times. The officer died shortly afterwards.

At the resulting trial, the jury found Noye not guilty on the grounds of self-defence. And there is some logic to this as former Kray henchman Freddie Foreman has said, ‘Put yourself in Kenny’s position. If you went into your back garden tonight and someone leaps out of the ground in a mask and that, what would you think? You would suspect they was there to rob you and your family.’

In 1986, though, he was found guilty of conspiracy to handle the Brink’s-Mat gold, fined
£
700,000 and sentenced to 14 years in prison, although he had to serve only 8 years before being released in 1994. For several years, Noye slipped in and out of the country from Spain, where he had built several large villas; then, on Sunday, 19 May 1996, Noye stabbed to death 21-year-old electrical engineer Stephen Cameron during a so-called ‘road-rage’ incident at the M25/M20 intersection near Swanley, Kent.

Noye immediately fled the country. The police tracked him to south-east Spain and, on 28 August 1998, he was arrested at the El Campero restaurant in Barbate on the
Atlantic coast and deported back to Britain. Tried and convicted in 2000, he received a life sentence. Eight years later, he won permsission to bring a legal challenge over the refusal of the Criminal Cases Review Commission to refer his conviction back to the Court of Appeal.

The life of Kenneth Noye has been one of malevolence and corruption. It is an example of how someone eagerly embracing crime as a profession can accumulate enormous wealth and frightening power. It is also a stark reminder of how vulnerable society can be when faced with such a single-minded predator.

Compared to the Gunn brothers, Kenny Noye operated at Premiership level, rather than at Conference. Hard as nails and highly astute, Kenny Noye was in a class of his own. A Freemason with a taste for the finer things in life – beautiful young women, expensive homes and international travel – his only real downfall, which has ensured that he could spend the rest of his life in prison, was his quick and violent temper. Had he not brutally stabbed to death Stephen Cameron in front of his beautiful blonde fiancée, 19-year-old Danielle Cable, in 1996, he would have still been enjoying his accumulated millions today.

Despite being acquitted of the murder of DC John Fordham, and the possible excuse of self-defence that convinced the jury at the time, Noye cannot be excused for the killing of young Stephen Cameron and leaving him to bleed to death by the side of the road. This was an entirely vicious, rage-filled crime, and it is right to point out that dark side to Kenneth Noye, rather than perpetuate the myth of the ‘gentleman master criminal’, a dapper, cheeky chappie, who loves his mum and looks out for those less fortunate than himself.

Pending the outcome of his possible appeal for the 1996 murder of Cameron, Kenneth Noye is currently expected to serve at least 20 years of his life sentence, but he will still continue to amass a fortune from his financial investments and, if he is ever released, he will return to society a multi-millionaire. He was 53 when he was locked up and he cannot be considered for release until 2020, when he’ll be in his mid-seventies.

Robin Hood? Kenny Noye was far from it. However, what we cannot take away from him is the undeniable fact that he operated for a time at the very pinnacle of the UK underworld.

And what of the legacy of Mr Kenneth Noye? Many of his former associates have met ‘unfortunate’ ends… although there is no suggestion here that Kenny played any part in their deaths or maimings. Indeed, it’s worth remembering that those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

Just after Noye’s disappearance following the murder of Stephen Cameron in May 1966, 34-year-old car dealer John Marshall was found shot dead in his black Range Rover at Round Hill in Sydenham, south London. It was Marshall who had supplied Noye with stolen vehicle licence plates, including the registration plates used on the Land Rover Discovery linked to the road-rage killing of Stephen Cameron.